When I was 8 or so, my mother would go to the city every few months, (hmm..never ASKED her why, come to think of it), and she would always ask, "What do you want me to bring you back?"
And in those days before books became a disposable item purchasable by the metre at the supermarket, before bookshops became Old Curiosity Shops, my answer was always the same, "A BOOK!!"
And one post-war novel, Elizabeth Goudge's Little White Horse', conveyed back from Melbourne in this way was so entirely memorable that I can recall, vividly, to this day the feeling of cold legs and needing the toilet as I sat on the little front porch of our wintry house, but needing, more, to go further, to find out, to keep reading,to keep loving these beautiful, wonderful words!
And all the time I kept calling out to my mother, "OH MUM..It's a beaut book..Oh Mum....it's beaut!!", the 8 year old's vocabulary leaving much room for expansion and embellishment.
Well, my Mum isn't around to buy books for me now...in fact I only took a volume or two from her collection, my brother having more room in HIS house, my sister having even fewer empty shelves than I in her apartment.
And I don't buy books for myself any more..Oh..okay, books for our shop and computer books for me..but not novels, not REAL books..not for myself! For the grandkids, yes, and my bookstarved son in Malaysia, but that's not for ME is it? In Australia,the public libraries are still functioning, albeit feebly, a literary shadow of their former well-endowed glory days, but they are all online, of course, even the smallest, with multimedia and BIG PRINT sections.
Our own local suburban branch library is small, not opened as often as it was, and always dusty enough to bring on my asthma, and the books seem not to be re-covered as regularly as they once were, and the paperbacks, in revolving stands rather than shelves, become shabby very quickly.
I took, `Pigs Don't Fly,But Dragons Do..' from such a stand having noticed that it carried high praise from Marion Zimmer Bradley and Anne McCaffrey...high accolades for any work of fantasy.
And then I saw that the book dealt with Celtic customs, mentioned Samhain and runes and Stones of Power and Druidic rites, herbal lore and potions, a ring made from a unicorn's horn..even a dragon- and since so many of my geocities friends seem to be into this sort of thing..and with All Hallow's Eve close to hand, I thought I might find this book interesting.
Interesting? An understatement indeed. This book holds between its covers the same magic that chilled my bare legs on that long-ago front porch.
And it has a handsome knight in it, too, which is always a help!
It is the story of a journey that takes a full year,from one place to another and back, and then off, again...or from girlhood to womanhood, from innocence to wisdom,..or from ugliness to beauty, the trip proving truly an odyssey well worth the travelling. And you journey in comfort, the language having a glorious melodic lilt to it, the humour wickedly mediaeval in its vulgarity, the characters and background countryside so vividly recreated that you can almost sense the seasons changing. There are smells here,not always savoury, and deeds not always noble, and the feel of rough stones underfoot..the sensation of cold, of fear, of near-despair. And always, the pushing ahead,the foraging, the slow, on-foot slog we can only imagine from our rubber-tyred distance-is-no-problem decade.
And what an assortment of characters parade, Canterbury-Tales style, through the stops and stages, through the daily life and dramas of this journey..most of them, indeed, no better than they should be, but full of life and personality aplenty.
I mean, when did you read a better opening line than:
"... My mother was the village whore and I loved her very much....
And the travelling party the heroine acquires? Five animals she can talk to, courtesy of the magic ring, and a blind Knight who'd rather not listen...this has to be the whackiest party of pilgrims ever, making Chaucer's lot seem rather dull and uninteresting!
And the flying pig. Is he a pig? If you kiss a pig does it turn into a prince?
You have to read right to the second last chapter to find out!
I finished `Pigs Don't Fly' in the bright sunshine of a perfect Australian Spring day, in a garden, still beautiful despite my recent neglect. My legs stayed warm, too warm, really, and I had one ear tuned for my ICQ pager, the other alert for the beeping an an automatic washer. Times have changed greatly since I sat on that cold step to be transported to the chalk-cliffs and pebbly beaches of half-moon-shaped bays in Goudgean England. But all through THIS book, too, I've been thinking.."Hey Mum, this is a great book. Hey, Mum, this is a BEAUT book!!"
And it's nice to know that, in the end, some things never alter at all!
Robin Knight.